Despite the evident dominance of the male,
experienced females exerted some control of
the group. Honcho's eldest mate was one such,
an unlovely one-eyed creature, but wiser than
the rest. During the dry season, it was she
who initiated brief daily excursions out of the
home territory in search of water.
Sadly, not long before my study ended,
when her newest cria was seven months old,
we found One Eye dead at the bottom of a
wash. Both her forelegs were broken. I spec
ulated that a neighboring male vicufia had
chased her into unfamiliar terrain and a fatal
fall. Two weeks later, her cria mysteriously
disappeared from the family group.
Most crias leave the group by being re
jected, like the young female I'd seen early
in my study. Since then, I'd observed the
same brutal expulsion enforced on each of
the young in turn. The males were exiled at
about eight months of age, the females near
the end of their first year.
But it was not only the young that were
rejected. The territorial male, unlike those of
many hoofed species, often turns away fe
males that try to join him. Thus he controls
not only much of the behavior of his group,
but also its size. In this ungenerous land,
where pasture is never more than barely
sufficient, it is essential that the population
of a permanent, well-defined grazing area be
limited to the number of animals it can sup
port. And that, through long genetic selection,
is exactly what the behavior of the male pro
motes. If he drives away his young and rebuffs
new mates, it is to help guarantee the survival
of his group. That is the way of his world.
Man Prized Vicufias Before Inca Times
For millenniums the world of the vicufias
and that of Andean Indians have been close
ly interlocked. Man's covetous quest for
vicufia wool, one of the world's finest, has
given the animals a special standing in the
Andean economy since pre-Inca times. In
the Sumbay caves of southern Peru there
are ancient wall paintings that show hunt
ing scenes in which vicufias and guanacos
were the main victims. The hunters of that
preagricultural society knew the value of
vicufia meat and wool.
Hunters of a later time, though still before
the Incas, built traps for the animals here in
my own study region. Game guard Saturno
Torres Blanco showed me two forms never
before described. From a hilltop he pointed
out a stone structure in the valley below.
"Look," he said, "the stone wall forms a V,
Cast out at the age of one, a female flees from her kicking, biting father. His mates placidly
watch the abrupt send-off, which regulates clan size and thus guards against overgrazing. Ex
pelled females join other families to mate and give birth; young males may roam in bachelor